AGW skeptic

As the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change prepares to release its Fifth Assessment Report (AR5) – the latest installment of its comprehensive assessment of climate science – early next year, the science is already under attack. As the U.S. Global Change Research Program puts the final draft of the third National Climate Assessment together, also due out in early 2014, its conclusions are already under siege.

In an updated report released today, Greenpeace explains how these attacks on the science of climate change – on the reports, on the scientists themselves, and on the rigorous scientific process itself – are part of a decades-old, well-organized, and richly-funded campaign to discredit the science of climate change and to intentionally pollute public discourse on climate change.

In Dealing in Doubt: The Climate Denial Industry and Climate Science, an update of their 2010 report, Greenpeace exhaustively describes the fossil fuel funded climate denial machine, tracing its Exxon-funded, tobacco industry-inspired roots in the 1990s to the intricate and secretive web of disinformation that exists today.

Democracy is utterly dependent upon an electorate that is accurately informed. In promoting climate change denial (and often denying their responsibility for doing so) industry has done more than endanger the environment. It has undermined democracy.

There is a vast difference between putting forth a point of view, honestly held, and intentionally sowing the seeds of confusion. Free speech does not include the right to deceive. Deception is not a point of view. And the right to disagree does not include a right to intentionally subvert the public awareness.